


Ice Age Heatwave Can't Complain

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [11]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 07:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12103713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Maybe it’s the lack of distraction.  They’ve all been down, even Turles.  The good reviews keep coming, the press keeps wanting more, but he knows that they haven’t sounded their best





	Ice Age Heatwave Can't Complain

The tour already feels different from the last.  There’s less of a hurry, less of a hectic rushing and trying to juggle four bands.  It’s their band and U6 along with Nappa, some roadies, King Kai, and Jaco.

It’s less “in and out,” too.  They play multiple shows in the same city or one close enough where it isn’t a production to get to it.  They can relax--almost.  There’s always press and after-parties and times to factor in eating food or trying to get sleep.  Time is measured in stoplights and street signs.

It’s their second show in this city and night’s already fallen.  They still have several hours until they go onstage.

“Hot,” Kakarrot mumbles.  He’s stripped his shirt off and is lying on the floor of the van. “And itchy.”

Raditz smacks his hand. “Don’t scratch it.”

He sits up on his elbows and smacks under his collarbone with one hand.

“But it’s  _ itchy.” _

“You’re the one who got a new tattoo right before we left on tour.”

Kakarrot already had had Gohan’s name written in script under one side of his collarbone but before they left home, he had gotten Goten’s under the other.  He lies down on the floor again and stares at the ceiling.  He’s felt off for the past few days.  Onstage he feels like he’s going through the motions.  He can’t lose himself in the flow of it like he normally does.  Maybe it’s the lack of distraction.  They’ve all been down, even Turles.  The good reviews keep coming, the press keeps wanting more, but he knows that they haven’t sounded their best.

“You alright?”

He shrugs, not really knowing the answer.  He knows it’s something more than just missing Chi-Chi and the boys but doesn’t know what that something more is.

“You okay to go on?”

“I have to be, don’t I?”

“It’s only two more months.”

Kakarrot nods.  Maybe it’s this tour.  He feels it dragging at his bones.  On the last one, they had more freedom.  Now there’s expectations.  It’s less hectic but there’s more pressure.  They’re not just five guys dicking around anymore.  They’re Apetail, the face of North Galaxy Label.  And he’s not just Kakarrot anymore, either.  He’s the co-frontman and guitarist.  If their band is the face of the label then he and Vegeta are the face of the band.  They’re billed equally like some grunge-punk hybrid version of the Jagger-Richards collaboration.  It feels weird.  He still doesn’t feel cut out for rock stardom.

“Put some A&D on it and then put your shirt on,” he says because his brother is just as good at dealing with this as he is.

He nods.

“Yeah...I’ll do that.”

\--

Turles’s hand is shaking as he brings his cigarette to his lips.  He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.  He’s felt off for days and it’s coming to a head.  He’s so used to keeping it together.  He called himself the moodmaker, didn’t he?  The one who keeps their spirits up--moreso now that he and Raditz are tight again.

Maybe that’s too much.  It’s too much for him to constantly be smiling and making everyone laugh.  There with a lewd joke and a click of his piercing against his teeth.  He doesn’t know why he’s losing it.  Maybe it’s because he’s held it together for so long that something’s bound to slip up.  He fits so neatly into the niche he’s made for himself with the band and with others.  He’s Turles, who fucked his boyfriend’s brother and ruined the one good relationship he’s ever had.  Turles, who hides the fact that he’s a substandard bassist under bravado and posturing.  Turles, who...

“Turles?”

Broly’s voice sounds flat but still somehow concerned.  The intrusion makes him drop his cigarette and it lands on the lit end, stubbing it out.

“Shit,” he growls.

“Sorry.”

Broly’s holding the two flaps of his flannel shirt together like he’s cold and he looks like little boy lost.  He’s way taller than all of them but to Turles he reminds him of a baby bird, something fragile he could shatter with a touch.

“It’s fine.  It’s fine.  I’m just…”

He grinds the heels of his hands against his eyes and, despite the dark, the after images burn bright.  He feels like he’s fucking losing it.  He needs to get drunk--no, he needs to get obliterated.  Blow or pills or something--anything.

“We’re all feeling it,” Broly says. “I think the first time around we were all distracted by life and shit, y’know?  Now there’s nothing to distract us from ourselves.”

It sounds weirdly poetic and Turles almost laughs.

“Distract us from ourselves?”

“Chemistry.”

He feels something snap.  That word, it bugs him.  It’s a simple word for something that fucks him up--that fucks them all up.

“Chemistry,” he snarls and spits on the ground. “I’ll tell you about fucking chemistry, Broles.  My parents had chemistry--the first night they met.  And nine months later, out I came.  My first fucking memory is sitting in the backseat with my fingers in my ears while she screams at him for how hard he was pressing the gas pedal.  That’s what  _ chemistry _ gives you.”

He isn’t yelling at Broly.  He’s yelling to yell and his words are barely making sense to his own ears.  His mouth tastes metallic.

“You’d think when he walked out that it’d be the happiest day of my life but it got worse.  She got worse.  Nothing I did was ever good enough.  And she let me fucking know it.  All the goddamn time.”

He’s never said this to anyone, even Raditz.  He doesn’t talk about his mom or he avoids it with a joke.  A reflex.  His hands are shaking more and he doesn’t recognize his voice.  Raditz is the one who keeps everyone together but he keeps it light.  Broly mopes, Vegeta throws tantrums, and Kakarrot floats off into space.  He’s there with a joke or a joint or something--anything.

“Turles…”

“I hate it--I fucking.  I just--” He lets out a strangled yell.

Turles doesn’t realize he’s crouched on the ground until he feels the grit fn the cement against his forehead.  It’s not just his mother bitterly hating him for being young, for existing, burning him with her cigarettes or throwing the dinner he defrosted at him.  He feels a hand on his back and he lifts his head to meet Broly’s gaze.  He’s kneeling too and, as usual, his expression is unreadable.

“Yeah?” He wipes his nose--when did he start crying?

“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”

“What?”

“You said that’s what you were gonna do before shows.  Make speeches with motivational  _ Friday Night Lights _ BS.  It felt fitting.”

Broly looks at him and the corner of his mouth curves up in a fair approximation of a smile.  Turles hugs him tightly and he feels Broly’s hands stroke his back under his leather jacket but above his shirt.  He fists his own hands into Broly’s flannel and rubs his nose into his shoulder.

“Don’t tell anyone I cried,” he says. “It’s not punk rock to cry.”

“No one would believe me if I did.” Broly hesitates for a moment and adds, “and I think it is.”

“What is?”

“It is punk rock to cry.”

Turles sits back on his heels and wipes his nose again.  His snot glistens on the star tattooed on the web between his index finger and thumb and he wipes his hand on his jeans.

“Since when do you know what’s punk rock and what isn’t?”

“I can’t cry and I’m not punk rock so therefore…”

“You can cry.”

It’s a distraction from his own issues and he can come back to be the Turles that everyone knows and needs--not the screaming freak he was moments ago.

“No, I really can’t.” Broly shifts his gaze to side and looks down at his feet. “I remember being a baby, which is weird because they say you aren’t supposed to but I remember sitting on the kitchen floor and crying.  And whenever I’d cry, my dad would get down next to me and imitate it, mocking me.  Ever since then, I couldn’t cry.”

“Oh, Broles.”

“Don’t do that.”

He sits back on the heels of his combat boots and cocks his head to the side.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t put the focus on me.  You’re upset.”

He shrugs. “I’ll get over it.  Re-repress it and shit.”

Broly’s hands tense against his back and he shakes his head.

“You shouldn’t have to.”

\--

They play dismally.  Luckily for them, their genre of music lends itself to fuck-ups but Vegeta hears every mistake and grinds his teeth.  After the show, he stomps around the bar, all but kicking stools and tables over.  Music journalists are already calling him “The Moodiest Boy in the Alt Scene,” but he thinks they can shove it up their asses.  With his rage, though, there’s the inevitable crash and he hits it thirty minutes in.

He slumps out by the van with a bottle of vodka and a cigarette.

“Hey, asshole, thought I’d find you here.”

Even with his hands full, he manages to give Caulifla the finger.  She settles next to him and nudges his arm.

“Lemme in.”

He shifts his cigarette to the hand holding the neck of the bottle and lifts his arm for Caulifla to scoot under.

“I’m sad and I don’t wanna bother Kale so you’re the next best thing.”

“I’m the next best thing?” he asks, cocking a brow. “I thought the next best thing would be Cabba.”

“Nah, he’s too bony.” She rests her head on his shoulder. “Aren’t you gonna ask me why I’m sad?”

“No.”

Caulifla rolls her eyes and holds her hand out for his cigarette.  He scowls and takes a drag on it just to spite her.

“You also seem sad.  What’s up?”

Everyone’s “sad” aren’t they?  Kakarrot’s barely looked up from a bong since the show ended and when last he saw Raditz he was clearly disassociating while a blogger asked him questions.

“It’s getting close to when my mom died is all.”

It’s not all but it’s all he feels comfortable saying.

“I get it.”

It’s been almost fifteen years but he doesn’t think he’ll ever really get over it.  He was the worst right after it--or so he was told.  He doesn’t remember much of it.  Everything blurred and stirred in his head.  Once he was sent home from homeroom for talking to himself but he doesn’t remember that either.  The first memory of that time that he can recall clearly is two years after she died when he broke Zarbon’s nose.  That and what his father would say.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?”

Caulifla is messing with a stray thread on the cuff of his jacket.  She brings the sleeve to her mouth and tears it with her teeth.  He jerks his arm away and makes a disgusted sound.

“Why do you have to be this way?”

“I told you before: I’m your conscience.”

“That doesn’t even--you don’t--I’m trying to  _ talk _ to you.”

She grins and spits the thread on the ground.

“What’s up?”

He almost doesn’t say it.  Whatever’s in him that keeps him from opening up is clamped on his tongue but.  It’s different with Caulifla.  Maybe because he hasn’t known her for that long like he’s known Kakarrot or he isn’t in love with her.

“Do you think someone can be born broken?”

She doesn’t laugh like he thinks she might.

“Who told you that?”

“My dad.”

He scowls after he says it and inhales hard on his cigarette.

“He said that?”

“Yeah.  When I was a kid.”

“Your dad’s a dick.”

Vegeta rolls his eyes.

“I know.  Thanks.”

“Who the fuck says that to a kid?” she asks incredulously.

He shrugs and grinds his cigarette down on the pavement next to him.

“My dad,” he repeats. “But sometimes I think he’s right.”

“This more of your self-pity shit?”

He glares.

“I’m trying to keep it light.  Go on.”

He isn’t sure if he can now, but.

“My life is good now but shit’s like.  I’m going to lose them.”

Vegeta thinks to the burning on his arm.  He had taken Bulma’s advice and, before he left, got Trunks’s name tattooed under the lopsided crown.

“I’m going to find a way to sabotage it just like I did the first time we were together.  Because I can’t let myself be happy because I’m just.  Broken.”

He hates the words as he says them.  He takes another swig of vodka.  It tastes like nothing now and he’s getting that numbness on his lips that denotes that it’s starting to do its job.  Caulifla doesn’t speak.  She flicks her finger against one of the metal buttons of his jacket.

“I get that.  I used to think I killed my parents.”

“What?  I thought you said they died in a car accident or whatever.”

She nods.

“They did, but--I was a late kid.  When I was born, my big brother was already sixteen.  And when I was four...they had gone out to dinner and I had done some hellion kid shit, I dunno.  And Renso, my brother, said he was going to give mom and dad a bad report and I was so worried about getting in trouble that I wished that they wouldn’t come home.  And they didn’t.”

Caulifla bites her lip, scraping some of the dark lipstick she’s wearing off.

“I’ve never said that to anyone before.  You better not use it against me.”

Against all odds, he actually laughs.

“Don’t worry.  I’ve already stopped caring.”

She seems to get what he means (which is great, because he doesn’t) and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
